The Greek State tortures hunger strikers-open solidarity initiative-Thessaloniki

on Thursday, the 27th of January

-237 hunger strikers were terrorized by special police forces with bullet-proof vests and heavy weapons

-237 hunger strikers had to endure 9 hours of meaningless negotiations

-80 hunger strikers were left sleepless in a yard for a whole night in cold and rainy weather, 157 were amassed in the corridors of the first floor of a businessman’s mansion with no toilets or water

Thursday, January 27, 2011:

THE GREEK STATE TORTURES HUNGER STRIKERS

On Thursday, the 27th of January, the 237 migrant workers who were staying at an unheated, empty and unused part of the Faculty of Law at the University of Athens, still under restorative construction, were ordered to leave the place. They had started a hunger strike two days before, on Tuesday the 25th, demanding the legalization of all migrants in Greece, and had made the place of the hunger strike known days before beginning their fasting struggle, both to the University rector and the student union.

From 5pm onwards, dozens of special force police units blocked all access to the building of the Law School where the migrants were staying, with three consecutive rows of fully armed guards. Under Greek law, and due to a tradition of struggles, university premises enjoy ‘asylum’ and are off limits to police unless they are specifically invited by university authorities or when a serious crime is being committed.  Here, the serious crime was sleeping in a building site and risking one’s own life for the right everyone deserves – the right to be recognized as an existing person, to live and work like everybody else.

In other words, after an orgy of orchestrated media propaganda the day before, that disclosed the fact that the migrants are on a hunger strike and emphasized their illegal status, on Thursday the university asylum was abolished in order to address the serious crime of dignity. (The university rector obviously chose the side of the reactionary bloc of fascists, the media and the government.) Then the torture of the hunger strikers began. Two Attorney Generals escorted by police who had entered the Law School, told representatives of the hunger strikers that all strikers should leave immediately and be transferred in police vans to another private building designated by the government. While the hunger strikers felt deeply offended, and had not imagined that anyone would dare move them around in the condition they were in, they held firm to their terms for leaving the building: They asked for the riot police to let the gathered demonstrators approach the building, so that the strikers join the solidarity demo and lead it towards the new location.

It looks like the Greek police and politicians’ CIA training and seminars on exhausting the opponent are paying off. For nine hours the strikers were being threatened, they were offered lies, fake deals and promises the authorities kept breaking, a ‘negotiation technique’ that aimed at prolonging the process for as long as possible, so that the solidarity demo would disperse and the strikers become more disheartened. One hunger striker tried to kill himself by jumping off the building and was stopped by his comrades. The pressure was enormous, and most strikers did not know exactly what was going on.

The strikers were finally left to exit the Law School building with a solidarity group in the small hours of the night. Even after all this suffering, they carried their bags and blankets with their heads held high, and marched briskly the empty streets of Athens shouting slogans of victory. The sleepless migrants were taken to some mansion, owned by a businessman who is a friend of the minister of education and other MPs. All eight rooms of the mansion were locked. The heating was off and the building was freezing. The toilets were inoperative and filled with luxury furniture that had been removed from the corridors. There was no water. Around half of the hunger strikers were allowed to lie on the floor of the corridors and the rest were left outside on the lawn in front of the building. At 6 o’clock in the morning of a particularly cold day, it started raining. 80 hunger strikers that had been left outside to rest under the winter sky, were transferred, by a small solidarity group that was staying with them for protection, to a social centre nearby.

on Thursday, the 27th of January

-237 hunger strikers were terrorized by special police forces with bullet-proof vests and heavy weapons

-237 hunger strikers had to endure 9 hours of meaningless negotiations

-80 hunger strikers were left sleepless in a yard for a whole night in cold and rainy weather, 157 were amassed in the corridors of the first floor of a businessman’s mansion with no toilets or water

The actions of the Greek government and police, with the help of the media, transgressed every moral law. They showed no respect to the university asylum, but, most importantly,  they showed no respect to the sacred figure of the hunger striker, who, in claiming life and dignity, only has his  own life and dignity to offer.

allilmap.wordpress.com/

The accidental death of an immigrant

 14 November 2010

On the afternoon of Saturday November 13, a 21-year-old immigrant from Poland was killed outside the notorious Aghios Panteleimonas police station in Athens, because, according to the police, he jumped from a third floor window of the police station trying to escape.

Larnaca, Belgrade, Attica Square: Connecting the dots

Posted by clandestinenglish on 8 November 2010

Some info on the recent clashes in Cyprus

“Phinikoudes Beach was turned into a warzone, when marching members of three nationalist movements came into conflict with participants at the antiracism festival, and with members of migrant support group KISA, the organisers of the event”.
Cyprus Mail, November 6, 2010

The rainbow festival is being organized for many years by KISA (Action for Equality, Support and Antiracism) in Nicosia and Limassol. This year, the 13th Rainbow Festival was held in Larnaca and not in Limassol after the nationalist “Hellenic Resistance Movement” announced that it would hold an anti-immigrant demonstration on Friday 5 November in Larnaca, with the participation of the “Pancypriot Anti‐Occupation Movement” and the “Movement for the Salvation of Cyprus”.
The Rainbow festival was moved to Larnaca in order to stop the fascist threat, as it publicly announced.
We must have in mind that the Rainbow festival is sponsored by the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus and is being organised with the support of the European Commission Representation in Cyprus. That’s why the organizers thought they would have protection and felt no actual preparation for real fighting with the far right groups was necessary.
Far right groups seized the opportunity to describe antiracists as ”the enemy’s fifth column, funded by foreign centers”, accusing the Cypriot state that “from its birth, it fights against the hellenism of Cyprus in order to eliminate it“.
At the beginning of the event, people at the festival were three times more than the far-right demonstrators (mainly old, traditional nationalists) but by the end  neo-nazis were heading the attacks. Late in the evening, it was the police who was rescuing the few antiracists and immigrants who remained at the site until the end of the event.
Nazis not only controlled the streets, they also posed as anti-state and anti-police activists.
Something similar happened a month ago in Belgrade, at the LGBT pride parade, that was protected by the government and co-organized with EU Commission representatives in Serbia. It is estimated that on the day of the LGBT pride parade, over 6,000 fascistoid youths (supported by football clubs and priests) were fighting the police on the streets of Belgrade for hours. According to a report:
“Gendarmerie and other special units were using armored vehicles and tear gas, trying to regain control over the rally. Police clashed with the rioters near Palace Albania, where they were pushed back from Terazije Sq. The protesters were shouting ‘Go to Kosovo’ at the officers.The mobile mammography unit was stoned, bought with the help of donors and B92, in downtown Belgrade while the doctors were examining their patients.The headquarerts of the ruling Democratic Party were also under attack and were set ablaze for a short while. The building of the national television RTS did not escape the attack of hooligans, who also tried to storm the parliament building, but failed. A number of vehicles were damaged (…), including several parked cars and 11 police vehicles, two buses and two trolleybuses.”
Yesterday, at the local elections in Greece, the nazi (“Golden Dawn” party) candidate got 5% of the votes for the municipality of Athens. In the last few months, a central square in Athens (Attiki Square – see video) has evolved into a hothouse for fascists, who  have organized pogroms against migrants’ shops and apartments, as well as attacks with knives against refugee families sleeping in the park.
Why are these three incidents connected?
As we have already implied in our text On Crisis and Migration, the immigrant/refugee struggle is a lost cause, unless it is connected with the present crisis.
Last March, almost coinciding with the arrival of the IMF in Greece, a round of discussions began amongst people and groups aiming to prepare a series of no-border actions in Greece during the summer of 2010. Despite the important work  especially by people from abroad towards that goal, the actions were either poorly attended, or were canceled altogether. We feel there is a deeply political reason for this: At the moment, any struggles which are not connected to the new capitalist attack against (this time) its own strongholds in Europe, are doomed to fail. Let us explain:

The nature of the crisis and the far-right as a ”popular movement”

Two years ago, leftists and anarchists were celebrating the imminent end of capitalism after the collapse of the US banks. With the breakout of the greek crisis we started reading analyses about “over-accumulation [being] the main cause of the crisis”, or conspiracy theories about the “bad bankers winning over the productive capitalists”.
Things are clearly different though:
Migration flows are created by the same globalized capital that attacks populations through financialization, after having moved production from the developed to the developing countries, initiating the destruction of the middle and lower classes in the west.
In the past, the shock of the ”discovery” of the deaths at the frontiers of Fortress Europe or of the horror prisons in Greece, or even of the threat of a hyper-militarized Frontex Agency could be a viable tactic for the solidarity movement, but no more. Last November, in a text on the occasion of the 3rd International Forum for Migration and Development we said that immigrants bring home to the EU the reality of global capitalism and thus give us an opportunity to understand global reality beyond the virtual banality of consumerism.
Now that global capital is bringing third world conditions inside the EU (i.e. Aghios Panteleimonas/Attica Square) and is dismantling the middle classes, condemning to poor to utter misery, the serpent’s egg of fascists and neo-nazis appears in the guise of resistance. In countries where there is no organized and widespread social resistance movement, public discontent can be manipulated by mixing liberal politics with abstract, non-clarified cultural issues. In that way, with NGO-, liberal and EU coalitions, the substance of resistance is hijacked, as it is taken away from the oppressed and the radicals and the semblance of resistance is handed by the State, by Authority, to the new fascist riots, disguised as “society that cannot take it anymore”.
This is what happened in Serbia, which has been in deep crisis for the last two decades, and on a much smaller scale in Cyprus, (where it is nevertheless extremely important, since the fascist attack was a response to a Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot social movement that has been growing steadily for some years now).
Athens is a similar but different case. After the December 2008 riots, the attack against immigrants, climaxing in the summer of 2009, was part of a full-scale counter-attack (a kind of counter-insurgency) by the State. During that time, a social laboratory, testing the creation of fascist reflexes, was gradually being allowed to develop in the center of town, not far away from areas practically dominated by the social movement. It is now evident that if we do not organically connect our responses to the crisis to the issue of solidarity and struggle with immigrants, we are leaving a void that will be filled by the “fascist response to the crisis”.
Events in Larnaca, Belgrade and Aghios Panteleimonas/Attiki Square in Athens alert us to the possibility of a return of the far-right as a ”popular movement”.
No NGOs, no liberal alliances, no multicultural festivals or rhetorics of tolerance can be effective against it, neither is it enough to condemn Frontex on a humanitarian basis. To walk round Attica Square and still romanticize immigrants as ”neo-nomads” seems as irrelevant as interpreting the IMF-attack on developed countries and unemployment through Negri’s “end of work”. We have to see the current ”crisis” for what it has always been – a full-fledged war against the unprivileged, a war where you have to identify allies and enemies. Only in this context can we speak about the issue of immigrants and solidarity, poverty and the crisis.
Modern migration and the current crisis are products of the same move of globalized capitalism.
You cannot fight against the causes of one if you do not fight against the causes of the other. It is now obvious that we need a grassroots movement for social justice, a movement of self-organization and action, freed from disguised vanguardists and supporters of electoral politics, freed from the spectacle of violence.

immigrants website greece

Detention conditions in Greece for migrants are frequently "inhuman" due to "filthy overcrowded detention facilities", poor police training and a huge spike in arrivals, a UN official said Wednesday, calling for EU assistance.

United Nations special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak also said he had received "consistent" allegations of police beatings, and that at one Athens precinct, police kept a hard line on migrants for fear of far-right militants.
"The time has come for urgent measures to fundamentally restructure the whole way of how asylum seekers and migrants are dealt with," Nowak told a news conference at the end of a 10-day mission to Greece.
"I appeal to the European Union, and the Commission in particular, to assist the government... they are in need of very substantial financial and technical assistance so that the crisis can be solved," he said.
The UN fact-finding mission visited five prisons, nine police stations, two border stations, three migrant detention centres and three hospitals.
In most cases, it recorded severe overcrowding at both jails and police stations. Some police detention cells, where migrants can be kept for up to two weeks, sleeping on benches or on the floor, were so overcrowded and filthy that the UN mission had difficulty breathing, the UN rapporteur said.
"Very often, I was told that cleaning personnel do not dare any more go into these filthy overcrowded detention facilities," Nowak said. "The hygienic conditions are simply indescribable."
At the detention cells of Athens International Airport -- which were built to house 18 people in groups of two -- the mission found 88 detainees. As only two bathrooms are available, the detainees regularly urinate in bottles.
"This is by itself inhuman," Nowak said.
To improve conditions, the UN official said asylum procedures ought to be transferred to civil authorities and that the health ministry should be placed in charge of health care in prisons and police facilities.
He also called for the establishment of an independent police complaints commission to investigate claims of abuse.
According to Greek figures sent to the UN, from 2003 to 2007 only one officer was dismissed out of 238 police ill-treatment investigations, he said.
"We found persons with injuries too afraid to allow a forensic examination, too afraid to speak even," Nowak said. "That is a very negative signal."
But police say they also feel pressured into a hard line, he said.
In one Athens district with a high migrant population that has seen frequent clashes and attacks on foreigners, high-level officers said they felt "at risk" from far-right groups and could not afford to be seen as soft, Nowak said.
About 300-400 persons enter Greece illegally every day, not counting those returned by other European Union states under current EU migration regulations, known as the Dublin II system, Nowak said.
The police this week said they had caught more than 96,000 irregular migrants in the first nine months of the year, and that arrests on the Greek-Turkish border had spiked by nearly 400 percent compared to the equivalent period last year.
The authorities attribute the increase to the success of Greek-EU patrols in patrolling the waters around Aegean Sea islands which were hitherto used by people smugglers to land migrants.
In recent years Greece has had one of Europe's lowest asylum approval rates, with only 0.9 percent of applications accepted.
© ANP/AFP

WORKING AND LIVING BY THE SWEAT OF OUR BROW!
We sell things on the street because we don’t have an alternative way of making a living.
No work is refused in order for us to make a living.
These people that you see on the street , these people that you keep harassing, are people who are familiar with most trades and professions.
Even though we are only vagrant street vendors, we are the ones paying for the houses that were had locked up for a long time, houses crying for a human presence.
A house can’t live by itself. It needs souls, it needs lives.
Water, power, telephone, means of transport and everything else we need to live are not for free.
You will never see one of us involved in affairs of the night and the underworld.
We are honest people, very sociable and open to everyone and everything.
We have obligations, but we also have rights.
We are only asking for understanding and tolerance.
Immigrant street vendors

IN GREECE
I arrive in GREECE in the morning, at 7 o’clock. The GREEK police took us to a camp. This camp was very dirty I have been in this for 23 days.
After 23 days the police sent me to another camp witch was for minors refugees. The director of this camp told me it was full and that I must go to ATHENS.
Then I went to ATHENS but I had just enough money for the ticket and nothing for the hotel. When I reached ATHENS I only had 7 euros. I saw that in ATHENS there was a lot of refugees who were sleeping in the parks. I slept one night with them and after I left ATHENS to PATRAS.
I arrived in PATRAS with my 7 euros. I found that PATRAS was like ATHENS. I have been in PATRAS for 3 months. Most of the nights I had to look for food in the bins because I had nothing. In PATRAS all refugees wanted to go forward but the police didn’t let us go.
After 3 months I came back to ATHENS and then I went to the camp for minors. We were sometimes more than 200 minors there. There I have been for 9 months I became lazy because we only ate and slept . Nevertheless I learnt German and Greek. Sometimes I went by foot to the beach, near Mytilini – 9 hours’ walk. I had no money for the bus. I didn’t have any future there. I found work for 3 months harvesting oranges. With the money I spared, I paid 500 euros to a smuggler and I had 200 euros left.
Then I went again to PATRAS and I succeeded to cross to ITALY


Recently, fascist and nationalist violence has been on the rise once again in the wider area of Ayios Panteleimonas. From September 11th to September 14th, fascist gangs used the cover of some locals and the police to attack, beat and stab migrants and to smash up their shops. Yet the migrants don’t retreat. They defend their lives, they crouch together and defend against far-right attacks and pogroms. Ahead of the [local municipality] elections the far-right is intensifying its shouting against migrants who “steal our jobs” and “are responsible for the crisis”. At the same time [the far-right parliamentary party] LAOS is voting in favour of the IMF agreement while organised gangs support the “average greek tradesman” – that is, the same person who has for years now exploited their employees, whether local or not.

• are supplied by the state

The “citizen protectors” arrest, beat up, torture and arrest injured migrants. The local police station enforces the policy of the state and its bosses against the migrants. A policy which names endless policing as “citizen protection” and equates “organised crime” with “petty thieves”. A policy creating migrant detention centres, spills blood on the borders of the EU and names “illegal” all those forced away from their places.

• they’re sharpened by mass media and the national body

Mass media, regularly hiding away reality, present the groups of neo-nazis, macho greeks, racists and descendants of nazi collaborators as “groups of enraged locals”. They hide away racist pogroms, the stabbing of migrants and police violence and they instead project “a suffocating situation” and “increased crime rates”.
In the midst of the crisis they continue to target migrants as a “national threat to health, national order and security”. They are moulding a national body on behalf of those who sit on our necks, perpetuating national divides, racism and xenophobia.

Common Struggles by locals and migrants

Us locals and migrants must find common ground to breach national unity, to create embankments, to fight together against all sorts of fascists, the attack launched by the state and bosses, the contempt for our lives.

Video about the immigrants and the fascist attacks in Greece

Video-documentary from the Norwegian state media channel about the fascist attacks and the experiences of immigrants in Greece and especially in central Athens. The video exposes the difficulties and the brutality that the immigrants experience by the Greek state and some fascists living in Athens.
Nevertheless, we don’t agree either with the character and the perspective of the documentary or with the terminology used in it (illegal immigrants, the efforts of the police, etc).
The video is not objective about the reactions of Athens’ citizens. The fascists you see in the video chasing immigrants from the squares are not everywhere. It’s a huge problem in some areas in central Athens. There, some fascists, (and not “Citizens of Athens” that they use as a name), with the cooperation of the police and the Municipality, organize pogroms and brutal attacks against the immigrants.
On the other hand, there are many people that fight neo-fascism and pogroms, trying to express their solidarity to the immigrants with actions. Of course the enemy is the whole state and not only some dozens of fascists. We should also mention that the left-wing parties are totally absent in front of the huge problem, preparing for the elections.“The battle for Attica square”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPl9PW7ONIQ

Fascists, out! Anti-fascist gathering at Attikis square, Athens: October 8th at 6pm

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Two great posters have come out calling for an anti-fascist gathering at Attikis Square, tomorrow (Friday, October 8th) at 6pm. There is also an assembly tonight at 8pm at the Gini Auditorium in the Athens Polytechnic, to discuss the logistics of the demonstration.
Attikis square is in the heart of a vibrant area with a large migrant community, where fascist groups have recently tried to make a visible presence. The square of Ayios Panteleimonas, an operational centre for these fascist groups, lies only a few yards away. Tomorrow’s demonstration, for this reason, will be crucial.

DIVIDE AND RULE.

It is the policy that promotes interclass conflict in order to strengthen
state power and sovereignty of the capitalist system.
This is the policy of state power through which the immigrants of the ‘second and third generation’
are used as tools against the so called “new” immigrants.

The same fascist logic that until yesterday was striving against us
today is using us as a tool to serve their political interests and racist purposes.
Do not forget that we the Albanians immigrants always represented “the rubbish” from which they want to “clean” the squares.
Do not forget that our common enemy is the exploitative and oppressive
system, the state and its tools.

Gathering of Solidarity at Attiki Square on 8 October at 18.00

Against the social and state racism.
Against the fascist and nationalist logic
Solidarity is our weapon against the racist policies that aim at the
discrimination of immigrants and sustain racial discrimination.
For a self-organization of immigrants and a common struggle
via anti-racist collectivities for a life of freedom and dignity.

Forum of Albanian Immigrants.

“Migrants United, Fascists Trashed” (Poster in the Albanian language by the Albanian Migrant Forum)

• The fascists’ knives

Recently, fascist and nationalist violence has been on the rise once again in the wider area of Ayios Panteleimonas. From September 11th to September 14th, fascist gangs used the cover of some locals and the police to attack, beat and stab migrants and to smash up their shops. Yet the migrants don’t retreat. They defend their lives, they crouch together and defend against far-right attacks and pogroms. Ahead of the [local municipality] elections the far-right is intensifying its shouting against migrants who “steal our jobs” and “are responsible for the crisis”. At the same time [the far-right parliamentary party] LAOS is voting in favour of the IMF agreement while organised gangs support the “average greek tradesman” – that is, the same person who has for years now exploited their employees, whether local or not.

• are supplied by the state

The “citizen protectors” arrest, beat up, torture and arrest injured migrants. The local police station enforces the policy of the state and its bosses against the migrants. A policy which names endless policing as “citizen protection” and equates “organised crime” with “petty thieves”. A policy creating migrant detention centres, spills blood on the borders of the EU and names “illegal” all those forced away from their places.

• they’re sharpened by mass media and the national body

Mass media, regularly hiding away reality, present the groups of neo-nazis, macho greeks, racists and descendants of nazi collaborators as “groups of enraged locals”. They hide away racist pogroms, the stabbing of migrants and police violence and they instead project “a suffocating situation” and “increased crime rates”.
In the midst of the crisis they continue to target migrants as a “national threat to health, national order and security”. They are moulding a national body on behalf of those who sit on our necks, perpetuating national divides, racism and xenophobia.

Common Struggles by locals and migrants

Us locals and migrants must find common ground to breach national unity, to create embankments, to fight together against all sorts of fascists, the attack launched by the state and bosses, the contempt for our lives.

Solidarity gathering: Attikis Square,

Friday October 8th, 6 pm

AGAINST EXCLUSION, RACISM
AND SOCIAL CANNIBALISM
People in Solidarity

“Welcome to Europe”

Announcement

This is the name of the organization which discovered and exposed the field with the mass graves of drowned refugees on the border of  Evros. There’s no meaning in numbers and statistics, any more. Important are the coherences and thoughts that the images bring to those who are yet not dehumanized. The image of a shoddy metal sign, riddled by gun-shots in front of a field with fresh popped pits. “Cemetery,” is indicated, “of illegal immigrants” …
We know, of course, that a daily war is going on across the border of Evros, and its victims [we talk about dead people] are always the refugees. But it’s even shocking to know that the dead refugees are dumped into pits in the fields. Contextually are coming to mind images in black and white of war and mass killings, pictures of holocaust, with bulldozers piled up in ditches piles of corpses. Is this an exaggeration? But yet … The proportions that make the association inevitable is tolerance, indifference and complicity of those societies which are responsible for massacre.
Exaggeration? What the hell… Let’s we all learn to listen and then everyone should take responsibility for the tolerance, the indifference, and the complicity. Each year hundreds or thousands of people are killed around the -so called “civilized” western world- Europe ‘s external and internal (sea ports, detention camps) borders. The mass slaughter is taking place at our next door, as corpses are washed up on beaches where the western tourists are having their holiday, on beaches where the greek fishermen are fishing. Tragically, this mass slaughter on the borders is only the last act of the drama for the refugees who escaped from countries that have been devastated by western colonization, the IMF, dictatorships and tyrannies – servile to western interests. From countries which lack rudimentary infrastructure for the reasons above, and on the first heavy rainstorm or on a usual earthquake are measuring carnage victims. From the countries ravaged by wars for oil, diamonds, by wars of the western capital, by wars with the participation of the greek state for the sake of the greek capital.
After all these, at least let us demand from this state to bury the people who were killed in its frond door – bury them like humans and not like dogs. As a society we also have to demand stopping the institutional reproduction of this humiliating designation “illegal” for those people who were lucky enough to survive and cross that door.

Today, hundreds of Pakistani immigrants living and working in Skala,Laconia took the decision to go on strike after the pogrom that was unleashed against them earlier.

Today, hundreds of Pakistani immigrants living and working in Skala,Laconia took the decision to go on strike after the pogrom that was unleashed against them earlier.
After returning from their work in collecting oranges, they found the doors of their homes and shelters closed by the owners and their employers and their belongings on the street.
According to a common announcement of Migrant Workers Union, the Movement Working Together Against Racism and the Fascist Threat and the Pakistani Community of Greece, at least 500 Pakistani immigrants have nowhere to stay.
The police pogrom against Pakistani immigrants began immediately after the intervention of the prosecutor, which led to the arrest of an accommodation owner in Skala and then his sentence to 58 years in prison for the inhuman conditions in which he hosted large numbers of immigrants.
Police initially made around 60 arrests of immigrants going from house to house, and then released them after they gave them “notes on administrative deportation”. At the same time, police created a climate of terror to the house owners/employers, sparking the mass expulsion of immigrants from the homes they lived.
The workers, immediately after these facts, gathered in the Square St. Friday where they held an assembly and decided to go on strike to demand their rights. Specifically they demand the ending of the Pakistani immigrants workers pogrom by ensuring human housing, providing decent wages and they requested the government to legalize the immigrants and give asylum to refugees, something that Labour Centre of Athens has also requested.
The Migrant Workers Union supports the decision of Pakistani immigrants to go on strike protesting against the pogroms that now unleashed against them and called the GSEE (General Confederation of Workers) and the Labour Centres to actively support the strike and the fair demands of immigrant workers.
http://en.contrainfo.espiv.netcontrainfo.espiv.net

ANARCHIST SLOGANS IN SANTORINI ISLAND IN GREECE SOLIDARITY TO THE IMMIGRANTS! AND AGAINST TO THE FASCIST!AND COPS!

ANAΡΧΙΚΑ ΣΥΝΘΗΜΑΤΑ ΣΤΟ ΕΠΑΡΧΕΙΟ WATCH THE VIDEO!
Uploaded by neasantorinis. - News videos hot off the press.

santorini under attack by anarchists (it was about time)

LAst night in the famous island of santorini some state buildings were under attack with spays and colors .The town hall  a bank and an office 4 the public .
the local press says it is a shock 4 them and that a group of anarchists did it…
yea dudes ur so smart there , I thought it was batman but maybe ur right .
Anyhow that island is like no1 toutists destination , very expensive and lots of people working there without any insurance .

this is a picture of the town hall and I think it looks nice like that .
I ve been to santorini and I remember all the time I was saying to my self
shit we must burn this stupid island from east till west . my l idea has to do with the people there couse the make lots of money and they forgot how to be humans , how to talk nice , how to be friendly .They only care 4 money , money and nothing else . yea ok this is happening everywhere u gonna tell me …not that much , in santorini it is really bad .
whatever , well done comrades !
we are everywhere
ps: I also remember that it was full of cameras that island like u are in London down town …
burn , smash , and destroy the symbols of this rotten world .
a pic from http://athens.indymedia.org

A Dublin II Deportation Diary

Published on August 21, 2010

Why did you want me back in Greece?, ask the refugees being returned due to the Dublin II regulation from different other European countries. The deportation diary carrying the same name evolved out of a short visit in Athens, where activists from the newly founded infomobile project conducted interviews with refugees affected by this European regulation.
The findings, based on interviews with the people affected, are shocking and deeply disturbing. For although every story of flight to and within Europe is different, if we were to summarise, there are two main conclusions that need to be drawn.

In Greece, despite numerous announcements and communications of intent by the relevant authorities of the PASOK government, the situation has only worsened for refugees. There still is no support system for refugees providing even the most basic necessities, while the impact of the economic crisis has hit refugees the hardest: they are in an even more precarious situation by now. Frequent police raids have made their stay in Greece even more volatile and have increased the risk of repeated and prolonged detention under the same inhuman conditions documented countless times. At the same time, the Greek asylum system is still dysfunctional and only existent by name.

The Dublin II-regulation, on the other hand, destroys all hope refugees might have to reach their final destination and to escape the conditions in Greece by moving on to another European country. As the regulation stipulates that the responsibility for an asylum application lies with the country of first entry, many refugees that manage the journey onwards are simply deported back, without any examination of their situation. This leads to refugees straying around Europe, searching for protection and rest, sometimes even for years, only to find themselves deported back to Greece. Given the current situation of refugees in Greece, we contend that the human rights of refugees are fundamentally violated in Greece. Under this perspective, the Dublin II-regulation is a systematic violation of the non-refoulement principle laid down in the Geneva Convention on Refugees and needs to be abolished at once.
We invite you to follow the kaleidoscope of stories assembled in the report and to spread the word about it. The Dublin II-regulation is already under intense legal scrutiny by highest national and European courts, and it is the facts that you can read in this report that need to be brought to the public attention all over Europe: the state of the European asylum system in 2010 is a state of organised irresponsibility and violation of fundamental principle of human rights and international laws.

We invite you to read, not to freeze but to get involved: it is an invitation to join the refugees’ struggles for freedom of movement. It is not enough to report. Convince your government to accept more refugees and stop sending them back here! was one of the instructions we received at Attiki Square in the centre of Athens.

Patra struggles with migrants Greece

Truck drivers clashed yesterday with illegal immigrants in the port of Patra, which has again become a hub for undocumented people seeking to stow away on passenger ferries heading for Italy. Yesterday’s clashes were prompted by migrants trying to hide on trucks that were waiting to board ferries. Sources said that this sort of incident has been happening regularly lately. It is estimated that there are some 700 illegal immigrants currently living in Patra. About 250 are Afghans who live in the northern part of the city, some 300 are Africans who live in the southern areas and the rest are North Africans who have found temporary shelter in old, abandoned buildings. It has now become common for these migrants to stand outside bakeries or supermarkets in the hope of gleaning some scraps to eat. Some also rummage in trash dumpsters, as a decision by the Achaia Prefecture to provide the immigrants with one meal a day has yet to be acted upon. greek media..

Open letter to the vice nomarxis Papaioanou. from the infomobil w2eu- evros tour

Image scaled down

Dear mr Papaioanou, We heard you on the 12.08.2010 in the thraki tv saying that this massgrave we have seen with our own eyes, doesnt exist . You said: it was only some friends who burried their friend there and that the people who put his informtaion on a blog are liers. Since we, the INFOMOBIL welcome to europe network . are the ones who went to evros region ,in a group of 8 people from different european countries among us journalists and fotojournalists, trying to find out if the afghan husband of a woman we know,who was lost in the river evros on the 25 june 2010 together with 2 other afghan men,trying to find out if he is alive. We visited 16 places in evros,mainly detention prisons but also hospitals , to try to find out. The Stepp to the funeral of sidiro was the last of this travel. Since we could not find a proof that this three men,husbands and fathers Bashir Ahmad Zamani Seyet Hahadu Qasimi Mohamad Askar Jososfi Where found dead,but have to wait for the DANN tests of the familie members. We went to the cimetery ,knowing that it is one of the rare cases that refugees who die on the broders of greece turkei are buried in respsect And among people of their religion. We wanted to see this place and take also pictures,for the worst case that the DANN test proove that the three men have been also burried anonymously there. So that the wifes and children know at least where their fathers are burried.... We were schocked of what we found out ,returned to the village sidiro to talk to the mufti ,who then had disapeared and didnt go on his fone fort he next day,and decided then to make the story publik. Maybe you should make the effort to go and see on your own what we saw.then you would Stopp pretending that this grave doesnt exist. maybe after all this publicity , some people have taken the sign away now.but the buried bodies are for sure still there. This people died trying to enter europe ,fleeing from the situation in their countries.they died because they could not go like you and me with a passport in the hnad through the borders ,they died because europe doenst want them. The war that is going on in the region of evros,with the military machinery of greek police and frontex the european border police, has victims.and it is your responsability that the vicitims are respected at least after they are dead. Some unrespektfull people shoot at the cimetery sign with kleinkaliber ,you shoot at them , for a third time. the memory of Bashir-Hahdi-Mohamad and all others who left their hopes and lifes on the greek borders is for us a reason to continue searching for the truth. Stopp the war against refugees ! INFOMOBIL –w2eu.tour nr 1-Evros Welcome to europe network 16.08.2010w2eu.net w2eu.info

Mass grave of refugees in Evros Greece uncovered

ANNOUNCEMENT
15-8-2010

“Welcome to Europe”

This is the name of the organization which discovered and exposed the field with the mass graves of drowned refugees on the border of  Evros. There’s no meaning in numbers and statistics, any more. Important are the coherences and thoughts that the images bring to those who are yet not dehumanized. The image of a shoddy metal sign, riddled by gun-shots in front of a field with fresh popped pits. "Cemetery," is indicated, "of illegal immigrants" ...

We know, of course, that a daily war is going on across the border of Evros, and its victims [we talk about dead people] are always the refugees. But it’s even shocking to know that the dead refugees are dumped into pits in the fields. Contextually are coming to mind images in black and white of war and mass killings, pictures of holocaust, with bulldozers piled up in ditches piles of corpses. Is this an exaggeration? But yet ... The proportions that make the association inevitable is tolerance, indifference and complicity of those societies which are responsible for massacre.

Exaggeration? What the hell… Let’s we all learn to listen and then everyone should take responsibility for the tolerance, the indifference, and the complicity. Each year hundreds or thousands of people are killed around the -so called "civilized" western world- Europe 's external and internal (sea ports, detention camps) borders. The mass slaughter is taking place at our next door, as corpses are washed up on beaches where the western tourists are having their holiday, on beaches where the greek fishermen are fishing. Tragically, this mass slaughter on the borders is only the last act of the drama for the refugees who escaped from countries that have been devastated by western colonization, the IMF, dictatorships and tyrannies – servile to western interests. From countries which lack rudimentary infrastructure for the reasons above, and on the first heavy rainstorm or on a usual earthquake are measuring carnage victims. From the countries ravaged by wars for oil, diamonds, by wars of the western capital, by wars with the participation of the greek state for the sake of the greek capital.

After all these, at least let us demand from this state to bury the people who were killed in its frond door - bury them like humans and not like dogs. As a society we also have to demand stopping the institutional reproduction of this humiliating designation "illegal" for those people who were lucky enough to survive and cross that door.


MIGRANT FORUM OF CRETE
www.fmkritis.wordpress.com

“Which place?”, stories of a refugee

I came to Greece thinking that I arrived in a real place. I thought I would be recognised here, that I would have a place in this world. I am wondering now, is there really a place for me? Nobody seems to know where to put me. I am alive. I am a human being. But I am pushed away from all places, I am transferred from one place to the other, I have no right to be at some places. I just seem to have the right to be in specific places in a given time. I am like an old shoe that nobody wants to wear. I have only the right to be unseen.
When I arrived in Greece I was detained for some days in a prison on an island. Then I was transferred to another prison on the mainland. When I was released I already felt the fear deep in my breath. I wondered what would happen next. I asked myself where to go and where to stay. In Athens I went to the neighbourhoods, where I could find my people. I was lucky to find a friend from my village who helped me out some days so I did not sleep on the streets. In my pocket I had a white paper that limited my legal existence in Europe to 30 days. The days passed by and I had no right on any place in this world anymore. I decided to leave this country which did not want me. In Patras I tried for some months to cross the border to Italy. I was living in the trains on a marshalling yard. The trains there were not used anymore. They had no place anymore, like me. As I couldn’t succeed, I left for Komunisia. I lived in the mountains, in the cold and the dark. My only shelter was a sky full of stars. I lived in the same city with Greek people, but my world was another and the two worlds did not meet. One day I was arrested in the port. The police brought me to a prison in the port. We were 27 persons in a cell for 6. After some days I was transferred to another prison close to the border of Albania. We stayed some days there. Again we were transferred. It seemed to me as if they did not know where to put us, where to store us so that we do not disturb their lives. The bus took us far away to a store house they called a prison. The windows were far away on top of the building, our only contact to the outside world. In the night when I was dreaming I found my own place, somewhere to belong. In the day I was brutally reminded of the reality. I stayed approx. for a month there and in the end they released me. Suddenly I was free again in the middle of nowhere supposed to find my way back to civilisation on my own. But which civilisation? Which place? My life in Greece is a real life in real places, but of another category. Places where I am “illegal”, places where I am hidden, places where I am limited to a ghetto of the paperless. And if the police catch me, I have to be in prisons. I have the strong feeling that they want me to understand that this will never be my place too, that there is no place for me here. I think I understood!
source:  schengendangle.jogspace.net

Mass grave of refugees in Evros Greece uncovered

Published on August 9, 2010

During the first seven months of the year 2010, 28 human beings dies while attempting to cross the heavily guarded Turkish-Greek border. The corpses of the dead are being transferred to the department of forensic medicine of the university clinic of Alexandroupoulis. Since they can often not be identified, only a DNA-test is being carried out so that relatives can still gain certainty.

On 25th of June 2010 19 people drowned in the river Evros/Meriç. 14 corpses washed ashore on the Greek side and were brought to the university clinic by an undertaker from Orestiada. After the dead had been examined and registered, the undertaker brought them to a village of the Turkish minority on the mountains above Souflí for them to be buried on muslim cemetery.

cemetery of the illegal immigrants - muftia evros

However, the corpses can now be found in a mass grave outside the village of Sideró, in inaccessible terrain. Only a sign, riddled by many gun-shots, tells that this is the cemetery of the illegal immigrants where the corpses are buried. It is not immediately obvious that it is a mass grave. Upon closer inspection, one can however see holes that were excavated and again filled up by bulldozers and that can contain up to ten corpses.
Further investigation by w2eu, currently in the area to look for the corps of the father of a family who died in the incident on the 25th of June and whose family is currently in relative security shows that this practice has been ongoing for years. It is believed that between 150 and 200 dead have been buried in the mass grave. Although the local government ordered an ablution and burial according to muslim rite, the dead have merely been buried in the mass grave. This practice fundamentally lacks any respect for the dead as well as their relatives. Even an exhumation for the dead to be buried in a more dignified way is not possible anymore.
The existence of this mass grave at the external border of the EU fits the image of constant and continued humiliation and degradation of refugees. It is with a systematic brutality that refugees and migrants are stopped from crossing the borders, a brutality that even puts up with the death of those looking for protection. Even after their death, those human beings remain second class people that seemingly not even deserve a burial of human dignity.
We protest the abominable treatment of refugees and migrants and the contempt that is shown to them, no matter if dead or alive.

cemetery of the illegal immigrants – muftia evros

Beating suspect
Police in Areopoli, in the Peloponnese, said yesterday that they had located one of the perpetrators behind a violent attack on a group of four Afghan nationals in the nearby village of Sotiras last Thursday. The suspect is a 29-year-old local resident, according to officers who said they were seeking another nine people in connection with the attack. The four migrants suffered minor injuries after a group of intruders broke into their apartment and started beating them with sticks. greek media........

Second pogrom against foreign workers in Lakonia, Peloponnese Greece

On Tuesday, July 22, around 2 a.m., ”indignant citizens”, nationalist thugs that is , assaulted Afghan workers at the district Sotiras or Kouskouni near Areopolis in Lakonia Prefecture, Peloponnese.   According to the police report around ten people wearing hoodies broke and entered in the Afghans’ house and beat them with clubs.  Then they fired a gun on the air and left with their cars.  Four Afghans were taken to the Health Center of Areopolis and Sparta Hospital, and were allowed to return home in the afternoon of the same day.   The police mentions some small dispute the Afghans had with Greek locals in the previous days.

This is the second major racist incident in Sparta in the last months.  On February 5 2010, a group of 13 adolescents 14-17 years old set the house of Banghladeshi workers on fire.   The workers who were sleeping inside took notice of the fire in the last instance and managed to escape.  The young arsonists posted on the web the video they had shot with their cell phones some hours later.
adaptation of this enet article.

Seggregation and manhunts in Igoumenitsa

Posted by clandestinenglish on 24 July 2010

In gateway-to-Italy Ionian Sea town of Igoumenitsa (see here for previous reports) the situation gets harsher. Immigrants are seen searching for food and clothing in rubish cans. The nearby area of Ladochori has been turned informally into a containment area by the police, which guards there immigrants not allowing them even to walk through to the town of Igoumenitsa. Locals now demand that immigrants leave their village because they “steal and cause trouble”. At the same time the local branch of the DIA supermarket brand denies entry to immigrant customers for security reasons. The politics of seggregation have given rise to a culture of xenophobia.
There are also reports of an immigrant head injured by a track driver at the port area.
What’s more, the police thugs of DI.AS. force, infamous for their tactic to raid demonstration lines on their motorbikes and injure people, have arrived in Igoumenitsa town. They can now be seen on their bikes hunting immigrants.
On Tuesday, July 27, people in Igoumenitsa will gather to offer immigrants clothing and other needed stuff in solidarity.
info: http://ditiki.squat.gr/

Death toll rises at the greek borders

16 immigrants were found dead in the last 48 hours at the greek-turkish borders, near the Evros river (9 in Greece and 5 in Turkey) – two more were found dead on Saturday 26th June.
The number of immigrants that died in June in the Evros river remains unknown as more dead immigrants were discovered on June 8. Three more were found dead on May 27.
On the 16th of June, a 19-year-old Afghan refugee was found dead, hidden in the fuel tank of a truck, inside the ferry “OLYMPIC CHAMPION”, traveling from Patras to Venice.
…killed by a bilateral agreement…
On June 29, greek and turkish officials met in Athens in order to examine the progress of the bilateral agreement signed by the Greek Minister, Michalis Chryssohoïdis, and by his Turkish counterpart, Besir Atalay, on May 14.
According to the agreement, a border office is to be set up, near Izmir, which will be used for the readmission of irregular migrants.
Also, a readmission protocol will be put into force, according to which immigrants will be deported from Greece to Turkey and then to third countries.
MSF Report
On June 15, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) presented a report that “documents the unacceptable living conditions in the three detention centers in Greece where MSF intervened and presents data from psychological counseling sessions as well as individual testimonies.
Frontex press conference
On June 16, Frontex Deputy Executive Director Gil Arias-Fernandez announced that 88 percent of illegal immigrants – almost nine in 10 – that entered the EU in 2009 had come via Greece. During the first third of 2010, EU authorities arrested 3,500 illegal migrants at land borders and 2,900 at sea, indicating a shift in patterns of entry from the sea to the land borders. This shift was also reflected in figures unveiled by the Greek citizens’ protection ministry last week, showing a 50 percent decline in arrests of migrants in the northern Aegean and and 65 percent decline in the southern Aegean. By contrast, arrests on land borders in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace increased by 167 percent (from 2,416 to 6,459). In Epirus, arrests went up from 5,616 in the first third of 2009 to 7,889 in 2010.
Fernandez also confirmed that the first regional Frontex Operations Office will open in Piraeus later this year – with the office opening in July but only launching full operations in October. Until the end of 2011, it will operate as a pilot project employing 13 experts from various EU countries, and it will subsequently be decided whether to continue its operation.
Meanwhile in Athens
Attacks by fascist groups aligned with shopowners against immigrant street vendors on central streets have not ceased. But neither will actions of solidarity to immigrants:
Below is a leaflet that was distributed during a gathering outside Athens Chamber of Commerce

WORKING AND LIVING BY THE SWEAT OF OUR BROW!
We sell things on the street because we don’t have an alternative way of making a living.
No work is refused in order for us to make a living.
These people that you see on the street , these people that you keep harassing, are people who are familiar with most trades and professions.
Even though we are only vagrant street vendors, we are the ones paying for the houses that were had locked up for a long time, houses crying for a human presence.
A house can’t live by itself. It needs souls, it needs lives.
Water, power, telephone, means of transport and everything else we need to live are not for free.
You will never see one of us involved in affairs of the night and the underworld.
We are honest people, very sociable and open to everyone and everything.
We have obligations, but we also have rights.
We are only asking for understanding and tolerance.
Immigrant street vendors

Hunger strike starting today from prisoners immigrants on Samos island greece...

Hunger strike started 170 immigrants detained in immigration detention camp at Samos island Greece in response to theexpulsion from the country.
The hunger strike began after  the news that 60 people immigrants were on the border of Greece - Bulgaria.